On my very short street, two houses were part of a mortgage fraud scam. The mortgage scammers paid criminals to “buy” the houses, and then let them default, at huge multi-hundred thousand dollar markups over what the scammers had originally paid for the houses. Prostitutes lived in one of the houses, and folks who dumbed their garbage in the backyard lived in the other house. The FBI refused to investige, the local police refused to investigate — no one cared. It was business as usuall in America.

EVERY DAY. Hoover did everything he could to interrupt the healthy self-coordination of trade and commerce — and then posed as the poster boy of the “free market.” All in one swoop Hoover helped to destroy the market — and the reputation of idea of the free market. Bush has been doing the same.

Hoover’s anti-coordination, anti-market policies are well known. If you “don’t know much about history” or you are still caught up in the bogus myth of Hoover propagated by grossly dishonest Democrat journalists and historians 40 years ago, you might start with this eye opener.

“In response to the Credit crisis president Bush is gathering up all the people who did not see what was coming, denied what was happening, and then failed to see the implications of what was indeed happening.” — Mike Shedlock

Don’t miss Shedlock’s list of those who DID understand what was happening.

the story no one will tell. The worst hit area in Orange County, California — with housing prices down 50% in one year and whole blocks wiped out by foreclosure — is the city of Santa Ana, ground zero of the illegal alien invasion in OC.

BUSH AND THE SURGE. Wehner is a wise and learned Washington insider, well read in American foreign policy, known on both sides of the aisle for his honest, integrity and for playing it straight. Bob Woodward? Not so much. No, Bob Woodward is something different, an ink stained shill for his sources, a shallow celebrity journalist well known for making things up. I’ll go with Wehner on this one.

Worth thinking about:

in settling on a surge of five brigades to Baghdad and 4,000 Marines
to Anbar Province, the President bucked the views of most members of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General
George W. Casey, Jr., then the commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq, John
P. Abizaid, the commander of U.S. Central Command, military analysts,
the entire Democratic Party, much of the Republican Party, most of the
foreign policy establishment, the Iraq Study Group, and many within his
own Administration.

The prevailing view was that of General Casey, whom [in Woodward’s version told] the President in June 2006, “To win, we have to draw down.”
General Casey was exactly wrong, as was the much-heralded
Baker-Hamilton Report, which in its 96 pages dismissed the idea of a
surge in a single paragraph ..

The only real support for the surge was found within the White House
and the National Security Council; from General David Petraeus, who
succeeded General Casey and said, “I want all the force you can give
me” .. ; from Lt. General Ray
Odierno, who had the courage to request the forces he knew were
required despite the opposition from those he reported to; from retired
General Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff .. and, of
course, the early, forceful support of Senator McCain .. At the time the surge was announced, it seemed as if its
supporters could fit in a large phone booth ..